[380] The origin of his taste for mathematics was purely accidental:
begun in love, it continued to dotage. According to Aubrey, he
was forty years old when, "being in a gentleman's library,
Euclid's Elements lay open at the 47th Propos. lib. i., which,
having read, he swore 'This is impossible!' He read the
demonstration, which referred him back to another--at length
he was convinced of that truth. This made him in love with
geometry. I have heard Mr. Hobbes say that he was wont to draw
lines on his thighs and on the sheets a-bed."
[381] The author of the excellent Latin grammar of the English
language, so useful to every student in Europe, of which work
that singular patriot, Thomas Hollis, printed an edition, to
present to all the learned Institutions of Europe. Henry
Stubbe, the celebrated physician of Warwick, to whom the
reader has been introduced, joined, for he loved a quarrel, in
the present controversy, when it involved philosophical
matters, siding with Hobbes, because he hated Wallis. In his
"Oneirocritica, or an Exact Account of the Grammatical Parts
of this Controversy," he draws a strong character of Wallis,
who was indeed a great mathematician, and one of the most
extraordinary decypherers of letters; for perhaps no new
system of character could be invented for which he could not
make a key; by which means he had rendered the most important
services to the Parliament. Stubbe quaintly describes him as
"the sub-scribe to the tribe of Adoniram" (_i.e._ Adoniram
Byfield, who, with this cant name, was scribe to the fanatical
Assembly of Divines), and "as the glory and pride of the
Presbyterian faction."
[382] Dr. Seth Ward, after the Restoration made Bishop of Salisbury,
said, some years before this event was expected, that "he had
rather be the author of one of Hobbes's books than be king of
England." But afterwards he seemed not a little inclined to
cry out _Crucifige_! He who, to one of these books, the
admirable treatise on "Human Nature," had prefixed one of the
highest panegyrics Hobbes could receive!--_Athen. Oxon._ vol.
ii. p. 647.
[383] It is mortifying to read _such language_ between two
mathematicians, in the calm inquiries of square roots, and the
finding of mean proportionals between two straight lines. I
wish the example may prove a warning. Wallis thus opens on
Hobbes:--"It seems, Mr. Hobbs, that you have a mind to _say
your lesson_, and that the mathematic professors of Oxford
should _hear_ you. You are too old to learn, though you have
as much need as those that be younger, and yet will think much
to be whipped.
"What moved you to say your lessons in English, when the
books against which you do chiefly intend them were
written in Latin? Was it chiefly for the perfecting your
natural rhetoric whenever you thought it convenient to repair
to Billingsgate?--You found that the oyster-women could not
teach you to rail in Latin. Now you can, upon all occasion,
or without occasion, give the titles of _fool_, _beast_,
_ass_, _dog_, &c., which I take to be but barking; and
they are no better than a man might have at Billingsgate for a
box o' the ear.
"You tell us, 'though the beasts that think our railing to be
roaring have for a time admired us; yet now you have showed
them our ears, they will be less affrighted.' Sir, those
persons (the professors themselves) needed not the sight of
_your ears_, but could tell by the _voice_ what kind of
creature _brayed_ in your books: you dared not have said this
to their faces."--He bitterly says of Hobbes, that "he is a
man who is always writing what was answered before he had
written."
[384] Dr. Campbell's art. on Hobbes, in "Biog. Brit." p. 2619.
[385] Found in the king's tent at Naseby, and which were written to
the queen on important political subjects, in a cypher of
which they only had the key. They were afterwards published in
a quarto pamphlet, and did much mischief to the royal
cause.--ED.
[386] The strange conclusions some mathematicians have deduced from
their principles concerning the _real quantity of matter_, and
the _reality of space_, have been noticed by Pope, in the
_Dunciad_:--
"Mad _Mathesis_ alone was unconfined,
Too mad for mere material chains to bind:
Now to _pure space_ lifts her ecstatic stare;
Now running round _the circle_, finds its _square_."
_Dunciad_, Book iv. ver. 31.
[387] When all animosities had ceased, after the death of Hobbes, I
find Dr. Wallis, in a very temperate letter to Tenison,
exposing the errors of Hobbes in mathematical studies; Wallis
acknowledges that philology had never entered into his
pursuits,--in this he had never designed to oppose his
superior genius: but it was Hobbes who had too often turned
his mathematical into a philological controversy. Wallis has
made a just observation on the nature of mathematical
truths:--"Hobbes's argumentations are destructive in one part
of what is said in another. This is more convincingly evident,
and more unpardonable, in mathematics than in other
discourses, which are things capable of cogent demonstration,
and so evident, that though a good mathematician may be
subject to commit an error, yet one who understands but little
of it cannot but see a fault when it is showed him."
Wallis was an eminent genius in scientific pursuits. His art
of decyphering letters was carried to amazing perfection; and
among other phenomena he discovered was that of teaching a
young man, born deaf and dumb, to speak plainly. He humorously
observes, in one of his letters:--"I am now employed upon
another work, as hard almost as to make Mr. Hobbes understand
mathematics. It is to teach a person dumb and deaf to speak,
and to understand a language."
[388] The gross convivialities of the times, from the age of
Elizabeth, were remarkable for several circumstances.
Hard-drinking was a foreign vice, imported by our military men
on their return from the Netherlands: and the practice, of
whose prevalence Camden complains, was even brought to a kind
of science. They had a dialect peculiar to their orgies. See
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 294 (last edition).
Jonson's inclinations were too well suited to the prevalent
taste, and he gave as largely into it as any of his
contemporaries. Tavern-habits were then those of our poets and
actors. Ben's _Humours_, at "the Mermaid," and at a later
period, his _Leges Convivales_ at "the Apollo," the club-room
of "the Devil," were doubtless one great cause of a small
personal unhappiness, of which he complains, and which had a
very unlucky effect in rendering a mistress so obdurate, who
"through her eyes had stopt her ears." This was, as his own
verse tells us,
"His mountain-belly and his rocky face."
He weighed near twenty stone, according to his own avowal--an
Elephant-Cupid! One of his "Sons," at the "Devil," seems to
think that his _Catiline_ could not fail to be a miracle, by a
certain sort of inspiration which Ben used on the occasion.
"With strenuous sinewy words that _Catiline_ swells,
I reckon it not among men-miracles.
How could that poem heat and vigour lack,
_When each line oft cost BEN a cup of sack_?"
R. BARON'S _Pocula Castalia_, p. 113, 1650.
Jonson, in the Bacchic phraseology of the day, was "a
Canary-bird." "He would (says Aubrey) many times exceed in
drink; canary was his beloved liquor; then he would tumble
home to bed; and when he had thoroughly perspired, then to
study."
Tradition, too, has sent down to us several tavern-tales of
"Rare Ben." A good-humoured one has been preserved of the
first interview between Bishop Corbet, when a young man, and
our great bard. It occurred at a tavern, where Corbet was
sitting alone. Ben, who had probably just drank up to the
pitch of good fellowship, desired the waiter to take to the
gentleman "a quart of _raw_ wine; and tell him," he added, "I
_sacrifice_ my service to him."--"Friend," replied Corbet, "I
thank him for his love; but tell him, from me, that he is
mistaken; for _sacrifices are always burned_." This pleasant
allusion to the mulled wine of the time by the young wit could
not fail to win the affection of the master-wit himself. Harl.
MSS. 6395.
Ben is not viewed so advantageously, in an unlucky fit of
ebriety recorded by Oldys, in his MS. notes on Langbaine; but
his authority is not to me of a suspicious nature: he had
drawn it from a MS. collection of Oldisworth's, who appears to
have been a curious collector of the history of his times. He
was secretary to that strange character, Philip, Earl of
Pembroke. It was the custom of those times to form collections
of little traditional stories and other good things; we have
had lately given to us by the Camden Society an amusing one,
from the L'Estrange family, and the MS. already quoted is one
of them. There could be no bad motive in recording a tale,
quite innocent in itself, and which is further confirmed by
Isaac Walton, who, without alluding to the tale, notices that
Jonson parted from Sir Walter Raleigh and his son "not in cold
blood." Mr. Gifford, in a MS. note on this work, does not
credit this story, it not being accordant with dates. Such
stories may not accord with dates or persons, and yet may be
founded on some substantial fact. I know of no injury to Ben's
poetical character, in showing that he was, like other men,
quite incapable of taking care of himself, when he was sunk in
the heavy sleep of drunkenness. It was an age when kings, as
our James I. and his majesty of Denmark, were as often laid
under the table as their subjects. My motive for preserving
the story is the incident respecting _carrying men in
baskets_: it was evidently a custom, which perhaps may have
suggested the memorable adventure of Falstaff. It was a
convenient mode of conveyance for those who were incapable of
taking care of themselves before the invention of hackney
coaches, which was of later date, in Charles the First's
reign.
Camden recommended Jonson to Sir Walter Raleigh as a tutor to
his son, whose gay humours not brooking the severe studies of
Jonson, took advantage of his foible, to degrade him in the
eyes of his father, who, it seems, was remarkable for his
abstinence from wine: though, if another tale be true, he was
no common sinner in "the true Virginia." Young Raleigh
contrived to give Ben a surfeit, which threw the poet into a
deep slumber; and then the pupil maliciously procured a
buck-basket, and a couple of men, who carried our Ben to Sir
Walter, with a message that "their young master had sent home
his tutor." There is nothing improbable in the story; for the
circumstance of _carrying drunken men in baskets_ was a usual
practice. In the Harleian MS. quoted above, I find more than
one instance; I will give one. An alderman, carried in _a
porter's basket_, at his own door, is thrown out of it in a
_qualmish_ state. The man, to frighten away the passengers,
and enable the grave citizen to creep in unobserved, exclaims,
that the man had the _falling sickness_!
[389] These were Marston and Decker, but as is usual with these sort
of caricatures, the originals sometimes mistook their
likenesses. They were both town-wits, and cronies, of much the
same stamp; by a careful perusal of their works, the editor of
Jonson has decided that Marston was Crispinus. With him Jonson
had once lived on the most friendly terms: afterwards the
great poet quarrelled with both, or they with him.
Dryden, in the preface to his "Notes and Observations on the
Empress of Morocco," in his quarrel with Settle, which has
been sufficiently narrated by Dr. Johnson, felt, when poised
against this miserable rival, who had been merely set up by a
party to mortify the superior genius, as Jonson had felt when
pitched against _Crispinus_. It is thus that literary history
is so interesting to authors. How often, in recording the
fates of others, it reflects their own! "I knew indeed (says
Dryden) that to write against him was to do him too great an
honour; but I considered Ben Jonson had done it before to
Decker, our author's predecessor, whom he chastised in his
Poetaster, under the character of _Crispinus_." Langbaine
tells us the subject of the "Satiromastix" of Decker, which I
am to notice, was "the witty Ben Jonson;" and with this agree
all the notices I have hitherto met with respecting "the
Horace Junior" of Decker's _Satiromastix_. Mr. Gilchrist has
published two curious pamphlets on Jonson; and in the last, p.
56, he has shown that Decker was "the poet-ape of Jonson," and
that he avenged himself under the character of _Crispinus_ in
his "Satiromastix;" to which may be added, that the _Fannius_,
in the same satirical comedy, is probably his friend Marston.
Jonson allowed himself great liberty in _personal satire_, by
which, doubtless, he rung an alarum to a waspish host; he
lampooned _Inigo Jones_, the great machinist and architect.
The lampoons are printed in Jonson's works [but not in their
entirety. The great architect had sufficient court influence
to procure them to be cancelled; and the character of
_In-and-in Medley_, in "The Tale of a Tub," has come down to
us with no other satirical personal traits than a few
fantastical expressions]; and I have in MS. an answer by Inigo
Jones, in verse, so pitiful that I have not printed it. That
he condescended to bring obscure individuals on the stage,
appears by his character of _Carlo Buffoon_, in _Every Man out
of his Humour_. He calls this "a second untruss," and was
censured for having drawn it from personal revenge. The Aubrey
Papers, recently published have given us the character of this
_Carlo Buffoon_, "one Charles Chester, a bold impertinent
fellow; and they could never be at quiet for him; a perpetual
talker, and made a noise like a drum in a room. So one time at
a tavern Sir Walter Raleigh beats him, and seals up his mouth;
_i.e._, his upper and nether beard, with hard wax."--p. 514.
Such a character was no unfitting object for dramatic satire.
Mr. Gilchrist's pamphlets defended Jonson from the frequent
accusations raised against him for the freedom of his muse, in
such portraits after the life. Yet even our poet himself does
not deny their truth, while he excuses himself. In the
dedication of "The Fox," to the two Universities, he boldly
asks, "Where have I been particular? Where personal?--Except
to a mimic, cheater, bawd, buffoon, creatures (for their
insolencies) worthy to be taxed." The mere list he here
furnishes us with would serve to crowd one of the "twopenny
audiences" in the small theatres of that day.
[390] Alluding, no doubt, to the price of seats at some of the minor
theatres.
[391] It was the fashion with the poets connected with the theatre to
wear long hair. Nashe censures Greene "for his fond (foolish)
disguising of a Master of Arts (which was Greene's degree)
with ruffianly hair."--ED.
[392] Alluding to the trial of the Poetasters, which takes place
before Augustus and his poetical jury of Virgil, Ovid,
Tibullus, &c., in Ben's play.
[393] Decker alludes here to the bastard of Burgundy, who considered
himself unmatchable, till he was overthrown in Smithfield by
Woodville, Earl Rivers.
[394] Horace acknowledges he played Zulziman at Paris-garden. "Sir
Vaughan: Then, master Horace, you played the part of an honest
man--"
Tucca exclaims: "Death of Hercules! he could never play that
part well in 's life!"
[395] Among those arts of imitation which man has derived from the
practice of animals, naturalists assure us that he owes _the
use of clysters_ to the Egyptian Ibis. There are some who
pretend this medicinal invention comes from the stork. The
French are more like _Ibises_ than we are: _ils se donnent des
lavements eux-memes_. But as it is rather uncertain what the
Egyptian _Ibis_ is; whether, as translated in Leviticus xi.
17, the cormorant, or a species of stork, or only "a great
owl," as we find in Calmet; it would be safest to attribute
the invention to the unknown bird. I recollect, in Wickliffe's
version of the Pentateuch, which I once saw in MS. in the
possession of my valued friend Mr. Douce, that that venerable
translator interpolates a little, to tell us that the Ibis
"giveth to herself a purge."